CCW Presents a weekend workshop with C.s. lakin

Taking Your Fiction from Good to Great: A Workshop That Unlocks the Secrets to Publishing Success!

Want to master the fiction-writing techniques that catapult authors into best-seller success? If you want to take your manuscript from good to great, this intensive dive into craft is for you!

Fiction writers need to go beyond the obvious: compelling characters, masterful writing that nails genre, scenes that “show, don’t tell,” an engaging (riveting) story, and meaningful conflict that creates tension. Hugely successful novels have specific elements that set them apart and cause them to rise to the top of the pile and get readers enthusiastically telling their friends to read them.

While there are plenty of elements that novelists must master, it is the rarely discussed specific elements we are going to focus on that are often ignored or minimized. Yet, if writers nail these brilliantly, their novel will stand high above the masses published every day.

Today’s readers—across all genres—expect to be taken on a highly visual, sensory-rich, and emotionally packed journey with your characters. If you don’t have the skills and techniques to emotionally hook and move your readers, they will get bored and leave your story. 

During this 2-day exploration, you’ll be given these simple but powerful tools to help you build and revise scenes for greatest emotional impact. 

Here’s how this will work:

Saturday October 25: Gear up for a full day of learning. Sessions will run from 9 a.m. – noon and 1:30 – 4:30 p.m. with a lunch break in between. Here are some of the key topics you’ll be taught:

• The secret ingredients that make a scene powerfully effective, such as microtension, indirect description, strategically inserted beats, significant character change, and so much more!
• How to nail the purpose of your scene in the last few lines (and learning why working backward is the key!)
• Ways to “manipulate” your readers’ emotions so they feel what you want them to feel as they read
• How to break up your scene into specific visual  segments as a blueprint to write from — developing the general scene action you have in your head to crafting a powerful visual moment-by-moment experience for your readers
• Practical and effective revision technique that exposes the weak and strong aspects of your writing

Sunday October 26: For those who choose the 2-day option, you’re in for a treat! We’ll move into workshop mode and apply all the masterful technique you just learned the day before. You’ll bring your scenes, whether full drafts or simple summaries, and work them to perfection. We’ll take simple scene action ideas and flesh them out cinematically. 

This will be a hands-on activity, with instruction all along the way. We’ll examine your scenes and together work on making them solid and powerful together and in small groups. No obligation to be “put on the spot”—but be prepared to share your insights, reactions, and suggestions with the group! You’ll see how brainstorming and revising can actually be fun!

When: October 25–26, 2025 (optional 1-day attendance for Saturday Oct 25th)

Cost: 

1-day attendance (Saturday 25 Oct only): CWC (California Writers’ Club) members: $80 / non-members $90

2-day attendance (Saturday and Sunday, 25&26 Oct): members: $140 / non-members $160

Who:  Anyone interested in mastering fiction-writing technique! Whether you are just beginning to write fiction or have penned multiple novels, you can immediately learn and apply these skills to your writing.

Where: Workshop location TBD (based on number of attendees) in the Monterey/Pacific Grove area.

How to register: Space will be limited for this workshop, so stay tuned for information on how to register and reserve your spot for this great opportunity.

ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR:

C. S. Lakin is the author of more than 30 published books, novels and nonfiction. She is a book copyeditor and writing coach living in California with her husband and an arthritic Labrador. Lakin’s novels include a 7-book fantasy series (The Gates of Heaven), a 6-book sweet historical Western series (The Front Range Series, pen name Charlene Whitman), and other novels of various genres including psychological suspense, women’s fiction and relational drama, YA sci-fi, literary fiction, and even dark comedy. Her titles have sold more than 250,000 copies, some published in multiple languages. Her nonfiction books center on craft for fiction writers (The Writer’s Toolbox Series). 

Lakin has worked with more than 1,000 writers in 6 continents on their book projects, and more than 6,000 writers have taken her online master classes and courses at Writing for Life Workshops at cslakin.teachable.com. Her award-winning blog Live Write Thrive has more than 1 million words of instruction for writers. She has won awards for both her self-published and traditionally published novels, including the 2009 Zondervan First Novel Contest (Someone to Blame) and Digital Book Today’s 8 best Kindle books of 2014 (Conundrum).